INDIANA JONES AND THE ZEN OF PLAITED KANGAROO
by Pony R
Summary: Indy reflects on how he got into using bullwhips, and the life lessons he learned from them. Now, he's ready to pass those lessons on to Mutt.


**INDIANA JONES AND THE ZEN OF PLAITED KANGAROO**

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_I do not own Indiana Jones, or any of its established characters, all of which are the property of Lucasfilm, Ltd. And Paramount Pictures._

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"ALL PERSONNEL TAKE FINAL POSITIONS. COUNTDOWN TO DETONATION COMMENCING AT T-MINUS ONE MINUTE."

Indiana Jones stood, disheveled, dust-covered, and exhausted, in the middle of the suburban street that he had assumed, in a deadly error, was just another little desert town. The homes were perfect; brightly-colored suburban houses with attached garages, brand-new cars in the driveway, perfectly manicured lawns. It was the picture of The American Dream in the late 1950's.

None of it was real.

Indy had rudely discovered that fact when he had barged into the first house that looked like someone was home; there was a car in the driveway. Inside, Howdy-Doody had been playing on the TV set. When he had come into the living room after following the sounds of the kids' show from the kitchen, he had immediately apologized for his intrusion to the family sitting on the couch in front of the set. But, to Indy's shock and dismay, his apology had fallen on deaf ears. Literally.

Sitting before the TV was the Perfect American Family. Father, Mother, Brother and Sister.

All fiberglass mannequins.

"PLEASE DON SAFETY GOGGLES OR TURN AWAY FROM THE FLASH. DO NOT REMOVE GOGGLES FOR TEN SECONDS AFTER DETONATION," boomed the voice from the loudspeaker. Then, the sound of an air raid siren filled the air, its unearthly moan and wail echoing mournfully off of the nearby desert mountains.

The sound was deliberately designed to strike terror into all who heard it.

As far as Indiana Jones was concerned, it was working.

"Oh, that can't be good…" he muttered. If he hadn't relieved himself earlier behind a bush in the nearby hills, he would have shit in his pants right there. Looking to the foothills just outside of the little "Doom Town," Indy could just make out a tall, slender tower in the mouth of a canyon that emptied toward the fake village. Suspended near the top of the tower was a perfect replica of the Fat Boy bomb, the nuclear device that had leveled Nagasaki, Japan, twelve years before. Like everyone else in the world, Indy had seen films of the destruction, along with other footage of atomic bomb tests. He knew what they could do to a city. And, this close, he didn't stand a chance.

"T-MINUS THIRTY SECONDS AND COUNTING," came the controller's voice across the parched landscape and primary-colored village. Looking around fearfully, Indy sought to find a solution in his mind. An escape.

None came.

The houses, in their bright, cheery colors; the mannequins of neighbors walking their frozen dogs or watering their too-green lawns, seemed to mock Indy as he fought a rising tide of panic. A part of his mind found it ironic that he, along with these cardboard-cutout homes, was about to be nuked to atoms. The rest of him, though, was simply petrified.

'_Oh shit, oh SHIT! OH SHITSHITSHITSHIT!!'_

Dashing back inside the house, he ran around in the living room, searching for any kind of a hiding place. The closet! No… that would be annihilated along with the rest of the building. Wait… Yes! The chimney! Glancing inside, he saw open sky at the top of the flagstone and brick tunnel. No good; it would act like a perfect cannon barrel for the blast wave. Duck-and-Cover? What a joke!

Without thinking, Indy blundered into the kitchen. Turning rapidly in a circle, he was almost at the point of tears, his panic and dread were so powerful. In all of his adventures, through all of his narrow misses and close calls, Indy had never felt so helpless and terrified. He had dealt with booby traps, Nazis and natives hell-bent on murder, and many environmental factors that could easily have killed him. None of those compared to the horror of being incinerated by something that was only a half-mile away and more powerful than the Sun.

"T-MINUS TEN SECONDS AND COUNTING!"

Suddenly, inspiration beckoned him from the corner of the kitchen: A brand-new, King-Cool refrigerator which appeared just big enough to hold a man inside. In the roaring panic of blood rushing through his ears, Indy could make out the controller's voice echoing among the neighborhood, counting down to a horrific, fiery death.

"FIVE."

Quickly, Indy threw open the door to the fridge. Inside, it was completely stocked. One part of him considered the absurdity of that, while the other part reasoned that the government wanted this village to be as realistic as possible. Right down to a stocked, working refrigerator.

"FOUR."

Grabbing all the food, Indy tossed it out, across the room. A bottle of milk shattered on the floor, spreading its thick creamy liquid over the linoleum.

"THREE."

Indy then pulled the shelves out, from top to bottom, followed by the vegetable bins.

"TWO."

Cramming himself into the cold plastic and metal box, Indy spied a small plaque on the door's edge: _Lead-Lined for Superior Insulation_.

"ONE!"

Grabbing the edge of the door, Indy pulled it roughly closed, trying to push the image of a lead-lined coffin out of his mind. He knew he was about to die. At least now, he figured, he'd die from the concussions that were sure to blast the house, rather than being seared into nothing but a shadow on the wall.

But the door wouldn't close!

In a full-blown panic, Indy spared that last half-second to look down at the cause of the door's obstruction: a grapefruit on the floor, wedged between the door and the body of the fridge. His hands shaking almost beyond his ability to control his movements, he reached down to push away the offending citrus.

Too late.

Suddenly, the very air around him felt as though it silently _Cracked_, as if he was inside a gigantic toggle switch that had just been sharply snapped. At the same instant, the room became far brighter than anything Indy had ever witnessed. It looked as though existence was overexposed by at least four _f_-stops. Still trying to push the stubborn grapefruit out of the way of the door, Indiana Jones saw the darkness of the bones within his hand as though he were candling an egg. A second later, the flesh of his hand and arm, being exposed directly to the unearthly light, began to smolder and dessicate, as the movement of air carried the smoke that had been his skin away from the direction of the blast. It felt like a terrible sunburn, or like being pelted with hot sand. Before he could pull his arm inside, he heard a growing roar outdoors, and the floor began to tremble. Suddenly the blast wave hit the building, throwing the door to the refrigerator open, exposing Indiana Jones to the full force of a nuclear explosion. The last thing he registered was the air outside his coffin becoming a wash of flames and rocketing debris, the light going from brilliant yellow to pure white…

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Indy bolted upright out of bed, shaking, sweating, and terrified.

It had been six months since that terrible moment on the Nevada Desert near Area 51, and he still had nightmares about it.

Of course, the memory of the actual event was not as dreadful: he had managed to get the door to the fridge closed in that last half-second before the bomb was detonated, and he had, subsequently, just barely survived the blast and radiation. It still didn't make the recurring nightmare any less horrific.

Shaking, he looked out of the bedroom window of his home. It was a sunny, pleasant morning. The alarm clock on the bedside table read 8:45 AM. Marion was already up, judging by the smell of fresh bacon in the air. Knowing he would get no more sleep, Indy got slowly out of bed, his mind and body telling him, _'It's not the mileage, Honey. It's the years._'

He couldn't face sitting in a domestic kitchen scene, so much like what he had just dreamed in his fitful sleep, no matter how good one of Marion's breakfasts could be. Stumbling to the bathroom in the hall, he washed his grizzled face, and looked at himself in the mirror. The face that looked back had seen more than it's share of the world's problems; had seen many of its miracles, and had witnessed the loss of too many loved-ones and too much treasure.

'_Huh. Fortune and Glory, kid.'_

Not these days. Now, Professor Henry Jones Junior was Associate Dean at Marshall College. His stature had been restored to him, along with a family he'd never known he had. Granted, he didn't do as much globe-trotting and adventuring as before, but then having a son (albeit an adult greaser) was a whole new adventure, and Indy was thankful for the challenge. Having Mutt and Marion in his life again was an unparalleled joy.

But, with nightmares like the one he'd just re-experienced, he still had a lot of issues to work through. Returning to his bedroom, he went to the closet and was about to put on a T-shirt and jeans, when unthinkingly, he spied two of his most beloved possessions: his battered old brown fedora, the one he wore in the field, and his trusty bullwhip. Actually, truth be told, Indiana Jones owned more than one bullwhip. He owned at least eight of them. They weren't cheap; someone had once told him you could spend, on a quality whip, less than on a saddle but more than on a pair of boots. And many times he had ruined a good whip by getting it soaked in water, filled with desert sand, and on more than one occasion, getting it wrap-locked around a branch, beam, or power line while using it as a rope to swing from. When such happened, he usually couldn't take the time to go up into whatever the whip was locked around to retrieve it, so he would have no choice but to leave it. He was sure that somewhere, various people had come into possession of some high-quality bullwhips that had once been his.

He reached down, and picked up his beloved weapon. The one he preferred on his adventures was usually a 12-footer. It was useful for not only defense (as in popping it at a would-be assailant) but also it was long enough for effective wrap-around work, whether for swinging on, or for pulling a firearm out of the hands of an enemy. He also had several others in length from 6 feet to 10 feet. All of them, however, were of the same pattern and construction: kangaroo hide in an American style, heavily weighted with a large, lead-filled pommel knot or Turk's Head at the butt, and 8-inch spring-steel handle covered in a tight, 12-plait (or strand) round braid in a checkerboard pattern, which changed to a herringbone weave at the top end of the handle where the whip became flexible. This tapered perfectly down to a 6-plait point, with a long single-strand whitehide fall and finished off with a twisted nylon string for a popper. Dangling from the butt-end of the whip's pommel was a flat-braided 'wrist loop' that was not so much used for that purpose as for hanging the whip on a peg on the wall. It did, however, lend a nice visual touch to the whip, even though Indy preferred to store it in a round coil rather than hanging vertically. Though more fragile than cowhide, kangaroo was the top choice of the best whipmakers in the world, most of whom were Australians. It allowed for a finer, tighter braid and a smoother finish.

Hefting the old bullwhip in his hand, he knew what he needed to do: clear his mind of that awful nightmare with a nice, morning backyard popping session. Like dance or martial arts for some people, Indiana Jones found relaxation and enjoyment, as well as exercise, in the act of practicing with his bullwhips. And the sound of a well-thrown pop was incredibly satisfying. Nothing like breaking the sound barrier in your own backyard to get one ready to face the day.

And, he admitted to himself as he headed for the yard, it was also the best way he knew to honor the memory of the man who had taught him the basics of whipwork as a method of teaching important life lessons to a young Eagle Scout in Thomson Springs, Utah, whose father never had enough time to teach him anything.

**_Reviews are MUCHLY APPRECIATED! This is only the beginning!_**


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